The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  Walpole defused the situation by recalling the ineffective Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Grafton, and replacing him in 1724 with Carteret, who had been since 1721 a vocal and troublesome Secretary of State and one who was much too close to George I for Walpole’s liking. With one move, Walpole had rid himself of a turbulent and potentially threatening opponent at court and provided the Irish government with much-needed strength and determination. Even this was not enough. The storm of protest showed no sign of subsiding until, at last, Carteret persuaded Walpole to withdraw the patent in 1725. The matter soon lapsed, but its consequences were to be of some importance. The English government determined to take a firmer hold of the Irish Parliament, and placed responsibility for its supervision in the hands of a group of ‘undertakers’, who demanded, and received, the lion’s share of power and patronage as a reward for their continued and reliable management. There was to be little more trouble in Ireland for forty years. Walpole’s achievement may best be reflected in the loyalty of Ireland during the ’45. ‘Until the demise of Jacobitism and the development of a more powerful sense of national identity gave the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy the confidence seriously to challenge English constitutional and economic paternalism, Anglo-Irish relations would remain fundamentally stable.’12 The price that was paid for the purchase of this security, however, was weak and inefficient government, the continued subservience of Ireland to England and the identification of English supremacy with a small and ambitious group of political managers together with a broader propertied elite. As an eminent authority, David Hayton has recently argued, however, they did not consider themselves to be a colonial caste and were beginning to consider themselves to be Irish.13

  Although it would be unwise to take the comparisons too far, the situations of Scotland and Ireland were not entirely dissimilar. ‘Until at least the 1750s Scotland’s rulers were a beleaguered native oligarchy, dependent in the final analysis on English arms to keep them in power.’14 As in Ireland, London ruled Scotland through a small group of landed families who dispensed patronage and influence to reliable friends and agents. The politics of party, in Scotland as in Ireland, was replaced by the politics of faction. The Scottish Whigs belonged to one of two main factions, the Squadrone and the Argathelians, led by the Duke of Argyll. Even the Scottish Kirk was reduced to submission through the inexorable process of appointing and promoting only reliable friends of the Whig supremacy. As in Ireland, the consequences of partial and exclusive government by place and patronage in the hands of a narrow pro-English clique were subservience purchased at the price of indifference and dissatisfaction.

  Tension was never far below the surface of social and political life in Scotland, but it was over the issue of taxation that popular hostility to the Union made itself felt. The Malt Tax of 1725 provoked an outbreak of rioting, most seriously in Glasgow. As with the issue of ‘Wood’s Halfpence’ in Ireland, however, the removal of an independently minded minister, in this case the Secretary of State, the Squadrone’s Duke of Roxburgh, a review of the measure and a significant tightening up of political management quelled the unrest. Even so, soldiers had to be called in to restore order. In the following years, English rule in Scotland came to depend on the Campbell faction in the persons of the 2nd Duke of Argyll, his brother, the Earl of Islay. For several years, the surface of Scottish life remained placid, but the underlying tensions were revealed in the Porteous Riots of 1737, when a crowd of over 4,000 broke into Edinburgh prison and lynched Captain Porteous, a guard who was held responsible for the execution of a smuggler. This collapse of law and order was punished by the dismissal of the provost of Edinburgh and a fine of £2,000 on the citizens which was to go to Porteous’s widow. The government’s managers in Scotland disliked the measure. Argyll went into opposition, and although Islay remained in his post, the government did badly in the Scottish constituencies at the general election of 1741. Although incidents such as these did not seriously endanger the Union, they indicate not only the existence of repressed hostility to the men and methods used to maintain it but also, as was dramatically revealed in 1745, the reluctance of the mass of Scots to spring to its defence.

  Like all administrations of the long eighteenth century, that of Walpole generated its own opposition. Because the administration lasted for over two decades, the political competition between the government and the opposition became a consistent feature of political life. After the death of Sunderland, Walpole’s only serious remaining rival was Carteret, who had the king’s ear, who could speak German and who was noted for his enthusiastic support for the interests of the electorate of Hanover. In 1724 Walpole transferred Carteret to Ireland, as we have seen, and he had no further problems with him. But this was not to be the end of Walpole’s internal difficulties. William Pulteney,15 once a friend and colleague of Walpole, had been affronted when Walpole chose to replace Carteret with the Duke of Newcastle rather than himself in 1724. His accusations of corruption resulted in his dismissal in 1725 and he went into opposition. At just this time, Bolingbroke, who had returned to England in 1723, resumed active politics. Bolingbroke and Pulteney together came to enunciate in the pages of The Craftsman, founded in December 1726, the classic ‘Country’ criticisms of Walpole and his system of government. For Bolingbroke and Pulteney, the old party distinctions were giving way to a new distinction, that between corruption and liberty. They rejected the ministerial contention that opposition to the ministry meant opposition to the dynasty. They attacked the corruption and influence that allegedly sustained the ministry in Parliament and which reduced its freedom and independence. They sought to root it out by measures such as place bills, shorter parliaments and a Triennial Act, and they advocated either the disbanding or, at the very least, a drastic reduction in the size of the standing army. In order to confront Walpole’s corrupt use of the crown’s influence, they wished to unite Country Whigs and Country Tories into a powerful new force with which to oppose and bring down the minister and, on the basis of an appeal to public opinion, renew the constitutional functions of Parliament which they believed to have been established at the Glorious Revolution.

  In Parliament the burden of opposition was assumed by the Pulteney brothers, William and Daniel, and the Tory Sir William Wyndham.16 This was the core of the ‘patriot’ opposition to Walpole and his regime. To their efforts was added the force of the small group of indefatigable Jacobites led by William Shippen.17 They were joined in 1730 by Carteret on his return from Ireland and by the Secretary of State, Charles Townshend, after a dispute with Walpole over foreign policy had led him to resign. After this, Walpole assumed control of foreign policy himself. In 1733 the opposition was joined by Chesterfield and the ‘boy Patriots’ led by Cobham and including his nephews, George and Richard Grenville, and William Pitt.18 Their constant tirade of criticism may not have unduly disturbed Walpole’s peace of mind, but when it coincided with powerful bursts of public sentiment, it could unsettle the ministry and force it to change its measures, as it did in 1733–4 during the celebrated Excise Crisis.

  To this gathering galaxy of discontented, as well as extremely ambitious, political talent was added the social leadership of some of the great hostesses of the day, Kitty, Duchess of Queensbury, Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough and Lady Granville, the mother of Carteret. Most of all, the addition of the names of many of the greatest writers of the age – Arbuthnot, Fielding, Gay, Pope and Swift – ensured that the power of the pen and the influence of the stage were alike turned upon the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole. There can be no question that this was one of the most brilliant, most famous and most talented but, at the same time, one of the most unsuccessful oppositions in modern British history.

  We do not have to look far for the reasons for its persistent lack of success. However talented and articulate the opposition may have been, the fact remains that several of its leaders enjoyed somewhat dubious reputations. They were an odd assortment of Whigs, Tories and ex-Jacobites. However pers
uasive and trenchant their criticisms of the Walpolean system of government may have been, they had no detailed plan for an alternative system. Vapid constitutional generalizations were no real alternative to Walpole’s policies of security, stability and low taxation. Furthermore, the opposition was rent with serious divisions, between Pulteney and Bolingbroke, between the Country Whigs and the Country Tories and between the Jacobites and everybody else. Not surprisingly, it did not prove easy to unite opposition Whigs, Tories and Jacobites around the Country programme of The Craftsman. Arguably, too, the programme smacked of a perverse distaste for government, especially strong government, which, in view of the recent history of Britain, may have appeared misplaced. Furthermore, the Country programme was economically retrogressive. Its condemnation of financiers and capitalists evinces a reactionary nostalgia for traditional, rural society. No wonder, then, that Bolingbroke wished to restore an ancient constitution more appropriate to a past age.

  When The Craftsman abandoned the struggle in 1736, Walpole had managed to survive two general elections (1727 and 1734), the accession of a new king in 1727 and, not least, one of the most damaging political storms to sweep over any administration of the long eighteenth century. The Excise Crisis of 1733–4 bristles with significance for the student of the period. Its origins were simple enough. Encouraged by the success of the excise reforms of the early 1720s, Walpole determined to reduce the Land Tax by extending the range of goods paying excise. He reintroduced the excise on salt in 1732 while lowering the Land Tax from 2s. to 1s. in the pound. There was little enthusiasm for these reforms, and the measures passed the Commons by only 39 and 29. Undaunted by these precarious majorities, Walpole next sought to bring tobacco and wine into the scheme. By doing so, he hoped to save between £200,000 and £300,000 per annum and ultimately to abolish the Land Tax in peacetime.

  The subsequent uproar took Walpole by surprise. He might have predicted the onslaught of the opposition in Parliament, which based its hostility on the slogan ‘Excise, Wooden Shoes and no Jury’ and on its scare stories of hordes of excise officers intimidating innocent citizens. Yet what Walpole could not have anticipated were the spontaneous howls of rage from the fifty-nine counties and borough constituencies which voted petitions against the measure. Out of doors, the air was thick with pamphlets, broadsides and squibs. The great commercial interests immediately affected by the scheme, tobacco and wine, launched their own campaigns against the excise. More generally, the bill appeared to go beyond commerce to offend against the freedom and security of property so often proclaimed by Whig propagandists. Up and down the country, protestors employed the language of freedom and patriotism.

  On 14 March 1733 Walpole won a majority of sixty-one votes for his excise bill. This served only to inflame the forces opposed to it. Although public resistance was certainly stiffening against the excise it was, in truth, other factors which weakened Walpole’s position and caused his majority to collapse. A whispering campaign against the measure broke out at court and members of the Court party in both Houses began to waver. On second reading on 4 April 1733 Walpole’s majority dropped to thirty-six and, next day, to an alarmingly thin sixteen. It was uncertainty in the closet (the small chamber in which the king gave audiences to his ministers) rather than the force of public opinion which was dissolving the minister’s majority. He had already offered to drop the bill and to resign, a step that George II refused to consider, when he made one last stand for the excise. On 10 April he fought hard in the Commons against a petition against the bill from the City of London. He prevailed by 17 votes but on the following day, to universal rejoicing, he gave up the bill.

  The drama was not yet over. Sensing the possible collapse of the government, the opposition attacked in the Lords. On 24 May, on a motion to enquire into the estates of the South Sea Company directors, the vote was tied 75–75. Walpole may have occasionally found his majorities in the House of Commons difficult to sustain, but in the Lords he had hitherto been secure. It was only with the greatest difficulty and after dismissals of leading court peers from their offices that the Lords were whipped into line. Thereafter the minister was safe.

  In the short term, the Excise Crisis illustrates both Walpole’s dependence upon the king and the king’s willingness to support his minister. George II used dismissals, promotions and even peerage creations to help his minister through the crisis. Partly, perhaps principally, due to the king’s loyalty, Walpole’s reputation with the political nation very quickly revived. On 13 March 1734 the opposition moved up to a formal assault upon the administration by moving the repeal of the Septennial Act. In this great confrontation Walpole won the battle of oratory and argument as well as that of votes. His majority of 247 to 184 was evidence enough that he had re-established his position.

  In the longer term, the Excise Crisis unquestionably weakened Walpole’s position. The general election of 1734 reduced the number of ministerial Whigs from 342 to 326 and the number of opposition Whigs from 86 to 83, but increased the number of Tories from 130 to 149. Walpole’s majority, then, was reduced from 126 to 94. But it was the reverses suffered by the government in the open constituencies which weakened its reputation and its confidence. Voters, horrified at the prospect of excise officers violating their privacy, reacted with fury, taking their revenge on sitting members who had supported the excise. Ministerial Whigs were defeated in counties usually loyal to the government, such as Kent and Hampshire. Even in Walpole’s Norfolk, defeat could not be prevented. It required unusual ministerial exertions in the constituencies with small numbers of voters to keep the government’s losses to a minimum.

  Until 1733 the opposition had had nothing to celebrate. Its victory in 1733 had left Walpole in power, it is true, but weakened and wounded. New elements in the Parliament of 1734, notably ‘Cobham’s Cubs’, strengthened the opposition. Between 1734 and 1741 Walpole’s majority in the Commons sank steadily to little more than forty. Carteret and Pulteney had become leaders of a formidable opposition. In 1737 it received the unexpected support of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne. Like all Hanoverian heirs, Frederick quarrelled with his parents over what he claimed to be the inadequacy of his allowance, and he employed the parliamentary opposition to try to force the government to increase it. His enraged father declared Frederick’s court at Leicester House out of bounds, whereupon the heir proclaimed his formal opposition to his father and his government. Leicester House was to be the focal point for political and dynastic opposition to the Hanoverian regime for the next decade and a half. It was not so much the twenty MPs, many of them in Cornish seats, who rallied to the prince’s cause and formed a small prince’s party, which troubled Walpole. A prince’s court was a much more exciting and respectable focal point for Walpole’s disunited band of enemies than the home of any discontented politician could ever have been. It was impossible now to dismiss opposition to Walpole as unpatriotic, because by rallying behind the prince, the minister’s opponents could claim that they were defending the interests of the Hanoverian dynasty, as well as hoping for political reward in the reign to come.

  Opposition to the ministry was gathering in strength during the 1730s, but it was to be foreign policy and foreign war which were to bring Walpole down. It is important to remember that Walpole had limited experience of Europe. He never left England. Under George I, foreign affairs had been the responsibility of Townshend. Only after his fall from power had Walpole taken control. The objectives of Walpole’s foreign policy had been to maintain peace in Europe and to establish cooperation with France. These straightforward objectives were, however, to be confused by two factors: the presence on the throne of a Hanoverian monarch and the belligerent dispositions of several of the European powers, including Russia and the Holy Roman Empire. As to the first, George I was anxious to protect the security of Hanover. His anxiety to do so reminds us of the importance, and on occasion the centrality, of the Hanoverian context to British history in general, and foreign
relations in particular in the first half of the eighteenth century. George I was more than willing, therefore, to adopt a much more interventionist diplomacy than English ministers, who had to pay for the policy and defend it in the House of Commons. As to the second, Britain was to be challenged by Spain and Austria. Philip V of Spain and his wife, Elizabeth Farnese, were anxious to provide suitable territories for their sons and wished to seize the Italian duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. He, in turn, was determined to challenge British and French commercial ambitions through his own schemes for the establishment of an Ostend Company. These objectives were registered in the Treaty of Vienna of 1725 between the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, which fostered the diplomatic and commercial interests of the two countries. Townshend was anxious to resist such initiatives with all possible vigour, and with France and Prussia concluded the Treaty of Hanover in the same year, which provided for the defence of Hanover and Gibraltar and for the protection of British trade against the Ostend Company. The treaty made expensive demands upon England, including the requirement to provide 12,000 Hessian troops. Walpole had reservations about such a militant posture, and found it difficult to defend himself in the House of Commons against the opposition’s accusations that he was surrendering the country’s interests to those of Hanover. Townshend enjoyed the king’s support and, for the moment, Walpole was content to wait and watch. He had learned the hard way that the Hanoverian connection was a major high-political and foreign policy issue which was to embarrass ministers throughout the century.